More than 100 teens in Canon City, Colorado, were saved from a sexting scarlet letter last month.

Prosecutors decided not to press child pornography or other charges, which would have forced the middle and high school students to register as sex offenders for swapping and collecting hundreds of nude pictures. Some teens had evaded parental oversight by using the private Photo Vault app, which allows naked pictures to be hidden on smartphones.

The early data on the rate of adolescents exchanging sexually explicit pictures or messages, known as sexting, has been all over the map, ranging from the low single digits to upwards of a third of teens. According to recent research by Jeff Temple, associate professor and psychologist at University of Texas Medical Branch, anywhere from 20 to 30 percent of teens will send or receive an explicit text. By college, that number is around 50 percent. And 70 percent of teen girls have been asked to send a naked picture of themselves, he said.

Teens engaged in sexting minimize or dismiss the legal and emotional risks involved. But in 30 states, sexting could carry felony charges under child pornography laws and put participants on a sex offender registry. There are 20 states with laws that specifically address sexting; of those, 11 treat it as a misdemeanor, allowing informal sanctions such as counseling, according to the Cyberbullying Research Center.

When Temple has the opportunity to discuss these risks with students, he begins by asking them if they wear a seat belt in the car. Every hand in the crowd goes up. Then he asks, "Why?"

The students say they want to be protected in case there is an accident.

"But the chances are slim," he says.

"But just in case," a student typically responds.

Ah, just in case. This is where he wants them.

He tells them to think about how slim the chances of getting caught sexting seem.

It's unlikely. But what if?

Then, the consequences can be enormous -- life-altering. It's a crash in which reputations and futures get burned.

Yet anytime there is a big bust of a school sexting ring, which happens regularly in big cities and small towns all across the country, parents express shock.

Temple says parents do their children a real disservice if they don't pay attention to their online lives. They have to know how popular apps like Instagram, Snapchat and Tumblr work so they can help their children become responsible digital citizens.

Sexting creates a perfect storm of parental avoidance: unfamiliar technology combined with the uncomfortable topic of their child's emerging sexuality. But staying in a state of denial does nothing to protect your kids.

Temple says his research finds that sexting typically precedes real-life sex. And teen girls who sexted were more like to be associated with other risky behavior, he said.

"Risky behaviors tend to cluster together," he said, not that one necessarily causes another.

His advice to parents who catch their teens with compromising or inappropriate texts on their phones is not to panic or freak out. It's a chance to talk about consequences and boundaries. It signals a need for closer monitoring, but it is also an opportunity to talk about healthy relationships, digital citizenship and safe sex, he said.

"What does it mean to be online, and how does it reflect their offline behavior?" he asked.

Until our laws catch up to the ways in which technology has impacted teen interactions, parents have to continue to use stories like Canon City's to talk to their children about sexting.

Otherwise, kids risk being branded for life by a teenage mistake.

Perhaps you've heard the war stories from mothers who have raised teen daughters, told in the spirit of camaraderie, sympathy and encouragement.

The drama subsides, they say. The quiet resentment or open rebellion is replaced by mutual respect and affection. It's normal for these years to be fraught with tension and conflict, they reassure.

Conventional wisdom says the mother-daughter relationship nearly fractures in adolescence before it becomes whole again in adulthood.

But it doesn't always work that way, does it? Sometimes the distance breached in those years of struggling to create one's own identity is too great. The adult relationship fails to recover the way we imagine it will; it falls short of what we hoped it might become.

There's a mother-daughter team challenging this narrative with a radical notion: The teen years can be the time when mothers and daughters thrive in their relationship. It's when daughters need to keep their mothers close, argue Sil and Eliza Reynolds, in their book "Mothering and Daughtering: Keeping Your Bond Strong Through the Teen Years."

It sounded a little pie-in-the-sky to me. I'm sure there are some mothers and daughters who are naturally gifted communicators, or emotionally intelligent savants, who breeze through the years so many of us struggle with.

But how might one spot such unicorns, let alone join their ranks?

Girls in the Know, a St. Louis-based nonprofit, recently hosted a two-day retreat led by the Reynolds mother-daughter duo to teach how this radical idea could be put into practice. I was curious to see what kind of practical tools they could teach that would deepen and calm the bond I have with my 13-year-old girl.

When I told her we were going to spend eight hours over a weekend learning how to "empower" our relationship, she rolled her eyes at me.

"Oh God. That sounds so cheesy," she said.

I hope the Reynolds are prepared for our enthusiastic participation, I thought. When we arrived and waited outside in the hallway with about 20 other mom-daughter pairs, my girl whispered to me: "There are so many other things I could be doing right now."

Well, this was going to be fun.

To my great surprise, it was fun. And moving. And enlightening.

The Reynolds kept our group together to explain some basics about emotional intelligence and effective communication skills, especially when talking about difficult topics. They used games to introduce concepts such as finding and trusting your intuition. Then, they separated the daughters and moms to give each group a chance to practice these skills among their peer group. When they reunited us, we had a chance to listen and respond to our daughters in a new way.

One of their main points was about finding creative ways to stay connected during a time when the culture encourages us to push each other away. For example, a nightly check-in that might only take a minute: Ask your daughter to share three words to describe how she's feeling, maybe when she gets home from school or before she goes to bed. Figure out one thing you enjoy doing together, whether it's watching a TV show or cooking, and make it a scheduled priority every week. Create a journal that is shared back and forth on a weekly basis.

There's never a silver bullet to making a relationship work. It takes energy and patience -- even more than many of us imagined, during the tumultuous years of rapid physical and emotional change.

But the story that Sil and Eliza told, in which teen daughters see mothers as their allies on the path toward independence, was so much more compelling than that in which daughters view their mothers with disdain or disinterest as adversaries.

Even my skeptical teen hugged me afterwards and said, "I guess it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be."

There's a payoff worth the eyerolls.

I was visiting the home of a close friend, near my own age, who had recently lost her mother after a prolonged illness.

A few of us stopped by to offer our sympathy.

The woman talked about her beloved mother with a measure of peace in her voice. She had been an amazing woman, one who lived a full life and had been dearly loved, my friend said.

I admired her strength despite the nearness of her loss. Then she revealed that a previous tragedy gave her perspective on her current grief. Her brother had died when he was 31. He had been diagnosed with a brain tumor while studying for his own medical boards.

His untimely death changed her and her family. But it taught her something that helped her cope with future losses: Control is largely an illusion.

"When it's your time, it's your time," she said.

Many of us reach a certain point, in midlife, when the prevalence of loss becomes more noticeable -- hitting more often and closer in intimate circles. Parents, spouses, friends, relationships, jobs, pets and, most unimaginable of all, a child, may leave our lives too soon.

So, what makes these losses easier to bear for some than others? While there is no set timetable for processing grief, there are factors that influence how it impacts us: our age, life experience, relationship to the deceased, the circumstances surrounding the death, and our support networks and belief systems.

There aren't any shortcuts in grieving. There are, however, strategies for coping. Survivors can honor the memory of the deceased by doing something purposeful in their loved one's name, spreading kindness or raising awareness. They can focus on the good in their lives, no matter how small, and hold tightly to memories. They might turn to prayer or share stories. Sometimes, it's simply a matter of moving through a single moment, day after day, until the passage of time dulls the sharp edge off of the pain.

The hurt of a significant loss is never fully erased. But it ceases to be an open, throbbing wound after enough time passes.

The way we reframe a personal loss, the narrative we tell ourselves about it, can eventually alter our emotions. Some parents who have gone through the unspeakable trauma of burying a child tell themselves that the child's life was meant to serve a purpose -- perhaps to provoke a societal change that could save other lives, or inspire others to be brave or grateful. Those who believe in a higher power and an afterlife take comfort in the hope of an eventual reunion. That ability to convince ourselves of what we gained, and what remains possible, is one of the few things within our control in times of despair.

The five stages of grief are familiar to most adults: denial, bargaining, depression, anger, acceptance. The length of time one lingers in each stage only becomes apparent in hindsight. In the midst of it, it can look like an empty, endless road of suffering.

Dan Duffy, a St. Louis-based video producer, published "The Half Book" last month, a story about his battle with cancer. He has also filmed a few stories of cancer survivors and victims.

"When we go through loss, we think, 'No one knows what I feel like,'" he said. "That compounds the loss."

He has devoted hours to recording other people's cancer stories, convinced that they are vital to healing.

"It reaffirms that we are not alone," he said.

We can be reminded of this when we visit with friends and family in the aftermath of a significant loss they have suffered. We may show up to comfort and offer support to survivors, but it's also a chance to remember our own losses -- to share that moment of sorrow that makes us human.

Life is filled with loss. Grace enters us in how we contend with it.